In response to all kinds of new information products being developed, especially when personal computers being widely used, more and more users become more critical with respect to the convenience in using them. For increasing data transfer speed of computer peripherals, a PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) local bus being developed by Intel Corp. PCI has become the widely used bus in its respective market. This means that other low speed buses (e.g., ISA (Industry Standard Architecture), etc.) will gradually be replaced by PCI in the computer market.
Currently, installing expansion slots on a motherboard of a computer for inserting PCI-compliant expansion cards is a dominant trend in the market. For a typical ATX type motherboard, five (5) or more PCI expansion slots are provided thereon. Conventionally, the higher the number of expansion slots on the motherboard the more powerful the expansion capability of the computer. In this regard, all major computer and/or electronics companies continuously make efforts to develop and/or improve the structures of expansion slots and cards in order to meet the needs of consumers. However, arrangements for fastening the expansion card are rarely improved.
For the current industrial IU (IU=44.45 mm) servers, in addition to a motherboard installed therein, only few associated electronic devices can be provided in the IU server due to the limitation of server height. However, in order to improve the performance of the server, an additional expansion card (e.g., the above PCI expansion card) is mounted on the motherboard for increasing the processing capability of the server.
Due to the limited server height, a typical process of installing an expansion card on a motherboard is by coupling the expansion card to a dummy adapter so as to change an orientation of inserting the expansion card to an expansion slot on the mother board of the server. Though the prior process can avoid the limitation of server height, it still suffered from several disadvantages. For example, the structures for supporting and fastening the expansion card on the motherboard are weak and unreliable. This means that the expansion card is susceptible to the vibration, which would easily cause the coupling between the expansion card and the dummy adapter loosened, resulting in a breakdown of the computer. To the worse, golden fingers of the expansion card can be damaged. Thus, it is understood that if no effective support and fastening means is provided, more inconvenience and trouble in replacing a malfunctioned expansion card or installing a new expansion card in the expansion slot would keep on troubling users. Consequently, this may cause users to complaint more about the fastening in installing an expansion card and discourage users to install new expansion cards. As a result, it will hardly hurt the market of supplying the expansion card.
In another point of view, for keeping up with the needs of the vast computer assembly market, computer manufacturing companies not only have to maintain product quality but also have to increase the assembly speed. Therefore, with respect to the requirement of increasing the assembly speed in the assembly line, particularly to the fastening of expansion cards has become an important factor in increasing computer assembly speed.